Glide

A question about : Glide

Any students, or parents of a student, such as myself, please check Glide out fully before signing up to them.

In theory it's a good idea - each person in the shared arrangement is responsible for their own part of the Glide contract. But you do pay a premium for this.

However, as my daughter has found out, they are not helpful when it comes to problems and customer service.

My daughter and her 6 friends took on their shared house in Manchester from 1st July - fairly standard situation with student housing apparently. They've signed up with Glide for all their utility bills including broadband. However, they've been in for a month now and still no broadband. They were originally told the broadband would be on mid-September but there was a problem when the engineer visited so another appointment was booked for earlier this week - the engineer didn't turn up - we believe this was due to be BT Openreach. Now they have been told by Glide that they won't have another appointment until later this month. They have also been told that their problem is not a priority as they aren't paying for it. However, we believe they are paying for the telephone line rental that they need for broadband and which they don't need for anything else. It's difficult for them to check their ONLINE account with Glide due to the lack of internet access. The girls that have iPhones have tried but they say it's not that easy to see the details they need.

But for students to be told internet access is not a priority - which planet are Glide living on these days - have these people tried to study recently! Everything my daughter and her friends need to access for their studies is online. They are having to go into Uni every time they want to do any studying. It's a bus ride away so not only is it inconvenient but it's costing them money they can ill afford too. Plus it's not just about studying - the girls want to keep in touch with their families, download music and movies, all the things we rely on internet access for yet, even being in a large city like Manchester, it's something that isn't an option for them, because of GLIDE! They have asked to cancel broadband, so they can arrange it themselves, but have been told there is a whacking great termination fee.

Does anyone have any experience of this part of the Glide arrangement and have any advice or help for my daughter and her friends - they are at the end of their tether.

Thank you in advance.

Best answers:

• It would help if you told people what Glide is before complaining about them.
  The internet provider cannot possibly charge a cancellation fee when they have failed to provide the contracted service.
• Apologies - I thought if I put it in under the Student Finance thread, people looking at it would be familiar with them.
  For anyone that doesn't already know of Glide - they are a company that brings all utilities under one bill, aimed mostly at students and businesses, enabling easier budgeting. The customer pays Glide one payment that covers all the utilities they have requested Glide to cover - Glide themselves do not supply any of the utility services.
  Hope that helps.
• Why would you sign up for it in the first place? The gas and electricity has a 50% premium added, you pay Ј5 on top of the water bill, Ј25 to sign up to broadband, Ј30 to cancel broadband, Ј30 management fee for a TV license. It is a waste of hundreds of pounds that I thought students would prefer in their pockets.
• I agree Brendon - it's not a great way to do it but my daughter and her friends, and many others, thought it would be easier than trying to split bills with potential disagreements, people leaving, potential non-payments, etc etc etc.
  However, they have signed up to it, they made that decision of their own accord so the cost isn't my concern, whatever I may personally think, it's the lack of customer service and help from Glide to resolve a big problem for them.
• The student children I know seem to use splitthebills.co.uk. It saves them hassle and is apparently reasonably priced. I haven't looked into it myself.
• In my first year, I had the misfortune to have arguably the world's worst letting agent, who signed us up for Glide without asking us.
  It took us 2 months and some stern letters for them to accept that we didn't need their services. We never did give them a penny, but we still did get official-looking letters from them demanding money. We just ignored them.
  Splitthebills is fairly reasonably priced, but it honestly is not that hard to set a similar system up yourself. The way we do it is that I have all control of bills and payments, which really isn't that much hassle after the initial set up - just let the payments run on direct debit. I perhaps need to phone a company up once every 3 months. No biggie. We each pay a set amount into a designated account every month - for us it's Ј30 a month each. The account is held by me, because I learned the hard way what a bad idea it is to set up a joint account with someone you don't know. The way we enforce it is we set an ultimatum - if bill money isn't received with no explanation, the internet password is changed and the lightbulbs removed from their rooms. We haven't had a problem yet in this house.
  It probably doesn't hurt that their deposits will go back into this designation account too - they know that if they don't pay bills, they don't get lights or internet access, AND I will still deduct the money out of their deposits in the end!
• Hi VanyaHargreeves, we are so misfortune like you, too.
  That misbehaviour letting agent signed up with Glide, too without letting us know. Our tenancy commenced on 1st Sep 2013 but we moved in on 2nd Sep 2013. That poor letting agent never informed us what to do with the public utility bills. Until 27th Sep 2013, we received the note left in our letterbox by a debt collecting company and chasing to us contact them or GLIDE.
  We are overseas students and never heard of GLIDE before. As we have one utility company in our country, so we called GLIDE and join them. We pay GLIDE GBP141 per month (from Sep 2013 to Aug 2014).
  Until we close our account with GLIDE this Sep, we were disappointed we have to pay GBP1,600 more. And the readings GLIDE charged on us was nearly 1,500 k/Wh more in accordance with our records.
  Don't know what we have to do with GLIDE as they chased for payment daily by email but never reply our email at all.